


Tell me what you want me to say.

by laudanum_and_wine



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: F/M, Ghosts, Hauntings, Horror, Pining, Romance, Unreliable Narrator, and I mean romance in the most creepy dark way, vague sad nonexistant romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-03
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-04-29 17:26:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5136350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laudanum_and_wine/pseuds/laudanum_and_wine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Crimson Peak, spoiler filled of course, and not even the VAGUEST HINT of fluff (or at least so far). Written in part as a fix-it (not because of romance but because of lack of abject horror!) Tagged for Graphic Violence and Non-Con for referenced events in the movie, not necessarily in the fic. </p><p>Edith no longer sees ghosts, in fact not even when she's trying to. Lonely and unable to resume her former life Edith walks the halls of Allerdale trying to find some meaning or reason behind her former ability, and the reason for the sudden lack of it now. The house is sinking slowly into the mire and Edith will contentedly sink right with it unless something changes for her. Time spent in someones shoes may not lead to forgiveness, but it is leading Edith to a lonely sort of understanding as she mourns over each and every death within the bleeding walls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. You Want a Revelation

"I know, I know, I know," She breathed the words into the wind, standing above the chasm that was the foyer. "I'm sorry, so sorry, I know." 

A breeze ripped through the halls, pressing her flush against the creaking railing, whipping her hair in long ropes through the cold white moonlight. The night was loud with creaks and groans of pipes and walls, whispering where moths were gathered in a drift of dead wings, pooled with the snow against the stairs. The house was full, dunes of dust and uncaring negligence. Her toes were beginning to appear almost white-blue in the cold light. 

Behind her the dog whined, high and demanding. The bedroom warm and rich with heavy air, gusts whipping the fire into a frenzy. Warm bedding was chilling in the air quickly, and the small dog shook. When his whining failed to elicit a response, he gingerly leaped from the bad, limping to his mistress slowly on his bad front leg. She had set his front leg when she found him, despite his nips and whimpering, and had fed him hot meat and soup until the little creature recovered, until it could bear weight again. Now they both limped, both because of the same wretched ghost. The dog stood by her feet, eyeing the moonlight, and whined again. When this failed to move his mistress, he began licking her feet plaintively. 

The burn of each bright little breath felt like fire on her feet, rousting Edith from her reverie. Her eyes had been tracing half-shapes in the moonlight, but all the swirls and spots now seemed to have been behind her own eyelids. Nothing waited in the light, the houses sighs were simply the rattles of old pipes in her head. She blinked back tears, surprisingly hot on her cheeks. 

"I'm so sorry." 

Her hands were cold past shaking when she scooped up the little dog and walked back into the warm bedroom. The little mutt whined and her hands, twisting to bury itself closer to her chest and her warmth. She placed the small dog gently on the now-cool sheets and walked back to close the door. As she bolted it, she could almost hear a fingernail scratching the wood, but realized it was her own, caught on the frame. 

The fire settled, behind the closed door no winds whipped in into life. As Edith fed another log onto the flames it danced, oblivious to the sullen cold outside. Warmth slowly permeated the room, warmth like a liquid pressing up against the walls and doors. The little dog quieted, watching his owner from the bed with ink black eyes. Edith kissed the small round forehead gently, as she crawled in beside him, and fell immediately into an aching sleep. 

~~~

Edith woke into a cold room, the fire long extinguished. Light cut across the room sharply, illuminating the open bedroom door. The dog was gone, but from the yard intermittent barking began. 

Edith stood and made the bed with the door still open, disregarded her nightgown and padded naked down the hall, bathed, then came back and dressed with the bedroom door still open. She couldn't find it in her heart to care about the cold on her skin, or the red in the bathwater. She certainly had no energy to care for modesty or shame either. 

The dog ran into the kitchen as Edith began to pull down a pot and start the fire. He curled into a discarded tapestry near the door. The hanging must have fallen in the night, she was sure of it, yet the fabric was already soaked red in one corner and coated in clay from a soft patch in the floor below. The dog didn't seem to care, his little corner of the nest was still clean and dry. Edith envied that simple joy as she cleaned the kitchen and prepared breakfast. When the fire warmed the kitchen and the eggs began to rise and fluff in the small pan, the dog began to edge closer, limping slightly and standing with his bad leg raised. He whined highly as she moved half of the eggs onto a plate, and she placed it in front of him. 

"There you go, little brave soul. Eat well and be strong."

Edith banked the coals, and they dined in silence as the cold seeped back into the room. She did not notice the red in the rag she scrubbed the pot clean with.

~~~

A good portion of the day was devoted to the care of the house. Even in such disrepair as it was now, some maintenance was needed daily. Edith had at first languished a week, leaving the hose without care before she determined the bare minimum of what was needed. Now the work brought her a sort of comfort, keeping her hands busy and her mind empty. 

The first task was feeding and caring for the chickens. The birds she had found in what must have been a study at some point, a largish room near the back of the house which was well insulated against the wind. Muddy boot-prints led a crimson trail from the kitchen door to the birds, who slept in a ramshackle coop hammered directly into the interior wall. The caretaker must have known of the birds and have fed them in the absence of any resident. While Edith at first had enjoyed the simply familiarity caring for animals brought, she could not bring herself to love these animals as she loved the dog. The birds were eerily silent in their cages.

After the birds were fed, any fresh eggs moved to the ice-chest along with a scoop of fresh snow, Edith moved to care of the house. A tour of the upper floors was made, taking care to shutter and bolt any windows which had come open in the night. This task had at first unsettled the lone woman, the repetition of latching and bolting the same windows day in and out had made Edith question her memory and, thought she never thought it in full, sanity. But after a week of the chore she began to accept it as a fact. After closing each window, she shut tight the room's door as well to further prevent drafts. 

Once the house was mostly wind-proof, Edith slid her feet into a pair of oversize boots she'd found, finding that her own shoes with the boots around them made the trip through the snow bearable. She made the long trip back and forth to the carriage house it seemed was being used as a woodshed. The firewood was moved into the kitchen armful by armful, then the boots were abandoned and half the logs were shifted again to the master bedroom. 

The next task for the day was always pushing back the encroaching red clay. The tapestry from the kitchen was pulled out to the yard, and laid flat in the snow. Most of the clay in the walls seemed to come from the bricks in the walls themselves. Edith knew nothing about brick-making, but she had to assume the bricks the house had been built with were poorly made somehow. The Sharpe clay had been renowned for it's strength and purity, so Edith had to assume the bricks made from the clay were not all sub-par. Secretly she thought that perhaps the house was simply rejecting the bricks, refusing to stand, trying to slump back into the mire in an accelerated form of entropy. 

Edith shook off the thought every day as it occurred. She nailed a few fresh boards up against the exposed woodwork on the wall, overlapping them to keep the seam of red clay from showing. This patch would last the day, perhaps the week, and Edith knew the tide of red could not be held at bay forever. But she tried each day, desperate to fix the house, to reverse the decay. 

After the patch was in place, Edith went outside. The red clay on the tapestry had dried, and she used a scrap of wood to break off what portions of now icy grime she could. Stained but relatively free of clay as it was, Edith examined the fabric. It appeared to be a hunting scene, hounds and riders descending on a bloodied rabbit. She dragged the fabric inside and dumped it into the corner by the newly patched wall. It would be a much finer dog-bed then a decoration. 

All other tasks done, Edith stood and dusted off the hem of her dress. The skirts were since long tinted red, trailing crimson stains into the yellow fabric. She stared long at the fabric, and then her hands, and finally the dog. The banked fire still held off much of the kitchens chill, and the little dog had settled into the now clay-free tapestry to nap. It blinked its black eyes at Edith as she started from the room but made no move to follow. 

Edith took the elevator down, always. The thing shook and screamed, but it was a smart little system of bars and pulleys, and took less time than the stairs. Time seemed vital to Edith only in this place. She carried no weapon, in fact none were in the whole house that she knew of. All of the kitchen knives had been packed away carefully and handed off to the caretaker without comment. None was needed. 

Downstairs, buckets sat below the slowly vomiting pipes. The red clay was almost a solid if shaken, but when left alone poured slowly as a liquid. Each day Edith came down, to empty these buckets, these vats, keeping the house from flooding, keeping the tide of red at bay one more day. 

Her hands no longer shook when she opened the elevator grate. They no longer shook when she threw open the metal grate on the first well. The red was visible, glistening far below. When the authorities had recovered the remains they'd emptied the wells almost to dry, but each day the level seeped up slowly, incrementally. Edith didn't help, dumping the buckets one by one into the well. It was indeed measurably more full then it's partners, if only just. 

The buckets back in place, Edith paused. The catacomb was silent. The mud dripped loudly in her ears. She stood for a beat, and then longer. Minutes passed without sound but her breath and the slow dripping. Finally she dropped the lid shut on the well and climbed into the elevator. It's rattles and groans seemed cacophonous. 

~~~

The moon, just a few days passed full, hung low over the horizon in the east. From her window Edith saw only the shadow of the house itself, stretching long across the plains. By the fire was the dog, licking the last of the porridge and meat from a wooden bowl. The clicking of the bowl on stone stopped, as the dog lay still, sleeping in warmth. 

Edith padded barefoot from the room, shutting the door behind her as the small dog slumbered on. Her feet carried her to the balcony, where she looked into the darkness. Several of the doors were open, and moonlight streamed toward her through windows that she was sure would also be thrown wide by dawn. Above, she saw the nursery door thrown wide, barely glimpsed the sway of curtains illuminated by the moon. The wind whipped through them from the open windows, making them beat like wings in the dark. 

The cold pressed against her legs, sitting there like the moment before an expected touch, the moment before one dives into deep water. Her breath caught, each breath caught, waiting for the shock of a touch and the shock of cold water. Seconds stretched into minutes, and her body abandoned its efforts at fear. The moonlight wings she could see from her post at the railing slowed their beating as the moon moved away from them, climbing higher in the sky and leaving the nursery dark. Edith watched the doors across the foyer darken as the moon shifted, watched each room become black again. 

"I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry," she pleaded with the night. 

A breath that wasn't her own caught in the air, a sigh. Edith waited for more, for words, for a reply. The moon climbed, cresting over the jagged hole in the roof to strike her face. Her toes were numb, and the wind began to gust again. 

"I know, I know, I know now. I am so sorry." 

With no reply for her whispers, she turned back to bed, unlatching the door and waking the small dog. He limped toward her, and then toward the bed. Hands numb and heavy, Edith latched the door behind her, then lifted the little animal into the blankets, to burrow below the covers beside her and sleep the only restful sleep this house might ever see. She closed her eyes, listening hard for the sound of a door or window opening, but sleep came before any such sound could.


	2. You are the night time fear.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reality and fantasy are both equally horrifying for Edith, so nothing seems quite so bizarre as to be impossible.

She passed the main parlor without looking to the side. No sighs of wind came from the room, no flutter of moths or crackle of fire in the hearth. The wreck of the piano lay as a heavy dead thing, sledgehammer still embedded in it's center, wire cutters atop it's bench. Each string had been cut, each panel of wood smashed. The scene was nothing if not thorough. The keys still lay in an almost straight line of gleaming white. Now they were depressing and lifting slowly, though no sound could be heard. The keys danced slowly in the cold moonlight, and Edith’s eyes glossed past them, registering the scene but refusing to think on it. 

She had come in somehow through the front doors, past the parlor, and had stopped before the elevator on that main floor. She knew something was wrong: there was no chill, no wind, no sound at all. The dog was not beside her, and no fires or candles glowed anywhere. Her mind was fixated on this, no sound, no other movement, and an answer felt like it was right before her- 

The elevator did creak when it arrived on her floor, and the sound broke Edith’s train of thought. She stepped in, watching her own pale hands close the gates, her own pale hands dial the lever. The basement rose to meet her, familiar now as any place in the mansion. As she exited the elevator, her feet hit the ground with an appreciable cold sensation. A slippery patch of red clay seemed to surround the elevator shaft, so Edith took care with each barefooted step not to slide. 

Something lay below the machine, at the far end of the room. Moonlight streamed in through the hole in the ground above, but something was there, behind the teeth of the machine, in the red-stained shadows. 

Edith thought to call out, but found she had no heart to speak. Her voice was always useless in this house it seemed. She instead stared fixedly ahead, placing one cold wet foot before the other, moving with perfectly paced wet slaps of foot across the stone floor. 

The thing was large, perhaps the size of a large dog or a bucket of clay, she thought. It seemed living though and as she draw closer she saw movement within the darkness. A squirming, the object was alive, curled up, and as she approached a little foot moved and fell into the light seeming all pale white with five little curled-up toes. A gasp sounded, a breath or sob, and the foot shot back into the darkness.

The thought of any child facing the particular horrors of this house shocked Edith suddenly into a more rational and active mindset. 

“Hello? Are you alright? You shouldn’t be here, little one, it’s not safe. Come with me, let me take you-”

She had leaned forward as she spoke, trying to move close to the child and use actions to convey all the things that her words seemed too simple to tell him. She tried to convey safety, and care, tried to think of the child like the dog, something better than this place. Something she had to live for. But as she had leaned in she had rested her weight on one hand, on a claw in the digging machinery. And as she spoke, a muted roar filled the air, and the claw lurched down, throwing her off balance. 

Edith’s pale hands reached out, landing on the leg of the child. There was a gasp, almost lost as the machine above the child spun into action to the sound of shearing ice and rust. Under the flashing light through the claws a little face with sickly green eyes stared back at Edith. 

She couldn’t scream, as she recoiled, all her words having been used up it seemed. Her teeth locked as the child crawled farther under the machinery, disappearing from sight. Only with the diminutive specter gone from view did Edith look at the machine. It was running in reverse, dropping claws full of red clay into the room, spreading out in lapping waves toward Edith's feet. The woman turned, to sprint toward the elevator and leave the insane machine, but stopped suddenly at the sight behind her. 

Each lid on the cisterns was thrown back and the wells were overflowing, pouring viscous red clay over the ground. The floor was already obscured by the ooze, and the steady grinding and liquid pouring told Edith that even behind her the digging machine was back-filling this blood-colored tomb. 

Her only way out was through the flood. Edith took three great strides, barely noting that the slope of the room led her down into deeper clay. As she realized this, he feet slipped from under her in a scant few inches of slime, and she was thrown into the mire on her hands and knees. Her hair soaked into the red, instantly heavy and dragging, an ungainly curtain of weight that felt as though it was dragging her face closer to the liquid’s level. She gasped back a scream, now determined not to waste her voice in these walls. She kneeled, then with a wrench of movement she pulled her hair free from the muck with both hands and threw it over her shoulders. The clay dripped down her hairline and into her eyes slowly, and she clawed the worst of it away with red-coated hands. 

She stood, feeling the cold liquid creeping up her ankles and calves in the darkness. A thousand gripping fingers caressed her skin under the surface, brushes and scrapes of things more definite occasionally sliding past. Her feet slid forward, heavy with the weight of the sediment and slippery against the hidden stone. Each step was careful, small, keeping her weight above her legs, preventing a fall. It seemed that suddenly the mud was up to her knees, and she knew a fall would weigh her down beyond recovery, beyond any chance of escape. Beneath the surface spirals and eddies of scratching solids had begun and seemed to grow. Strange currents slipped and flowed through the slime. 

The mud rose, incrementally, each step needing more precision and more care while each moment on the flooding pit she felt more panic, felt choked by the urge to run and scream and flee. Edith grit her teeth in the face of that panic, trying to let the thoughts slide past like the mud. 

When the mud had reached her upper legs she realized it had also begun to creep up through the elevator floor ahead of her. The filth was invading her only means of escape. A long drag of something below the surface shook her, like a scrape of fingernails against her inner thigh. Suddenly a flash of terror, a moment of panic for when the liquid would rise to her belly, when it would be against skin which so delicately housed her organs. Her feet almost faltered then, knowing that soon the only a thin layer of her skin would protect her from the strengthening clawing and scrapes of unknown origin. 

Her hands found purchase in the mud, allowing her to paddle forward as she strode, fighting the drag of her heavy hair, the drag of her dress below the surface. She realized tears were clouding her vision, her little gasps for air were the only sound beside the steady grind of the machine behind her. 

The red had reached her navel when she began to climb out of it onto the slightly higher ground around the elevator. Her dress began to emerge with each step, red and dripping, heavier than in the clay now that she had to bear it’s weight. Her legs shook, as she dragged herself forward. The noise of footsteps far above startled her. 

“Help!” She dragged herself into the meal grating of the cage, the mud in the elevator still covering her knees, “Down here! Help me, please!” With numb hands she tugged at her dress, trying to wrench it into the cage with her. The mud’s drag was strong, but finally she was in the cage and slamming the doors closed. The mud still rose, re-wetting the dress Edith had so recently reclaimed from the red mire. The scratching under the surface was stronger than ever, hands and claws and the caress of broken bones digging into her skin. Edith slammed on the lever, trying the raise the cage, but nothing happened. 

“I’m down here, in the elevator!” Edith screamed now, eyes squinted against tears. She was terrified of the footsteps above, growing faster and louder when she called out, but the mud below her was still rising, now filling her barred prison. 

Suddenly a slam of metal, and the cage shuttered. It was rising, slowly, the weight of mud on her pressing Edith to her knees in the cage. Slowly the liquid drained away, dripping in long ropes from the metal floor and into the ink dark below. 

Edith panted and coughed, standing in preparation to throw herself from the cage the moment it’s upward momentum stopped. The elevator rose and rose, past the first and second floors, to leave her at the top of the house, blinking into the darkness. She felt aware of the gaping chasm below her as never before, and threw herself out of the elevator and to the floor, the weight of her dress trailing behind her. Her crying was devolving into coughing, she noticed, hacking loudly in the night. She knew her calm had vanished, and through the hacking and the leaden dragging of her dress, she crawled toward the open nurser door. 

 

She woke that way, hacking and coughing, and rolled up and to the side in bed spitting the red from her mouth and onto the floor. For a moment of panic she thought it was clay, red viscous clay, seeped into her lungs and mouth and bones. But the morning light glinted on this red and as it spread out she recognized it as blood. 

The dog leapt into her arms as she sat upright, licking the blood from her lips and whining. This was his normal behavior when he saw his mistress wake up choking in a panic. She leaned back into her pillows, petting and calming the little animal and swallowing down the last of the blood. These fits seemed to be a remnant of her time here, like her limp. She had given the house her everything, and it had given her this, the hacking cough, listless days in bed, perpetually cold hands and feet from her poor circulation, a limping gait. The inability to ever dance again. 

Edith lay in the cold bed, chewing on her cheeks, thinking. She hadn’t understood it at first, why anyone would stay in this wreck of a mansion. Dripping walls and ceilings and the ever advancing red. She was beginning to understand perhaps, even if it was from a sick self destructive place. 

With a jerk, she sat upright, coughing fresh red into a handkerchief. She watched her blood spread into the white cloth, staining the small “T.S.” embroidered into one corner. Edith’s mind eye left her watching a rising tide of red clay, and the apology she’d had on the tip of her tongue withered away.

**Author's Note:**

> Title for work (and chapter) from music by Florence and the Machine! I have no rights to the music, the lyrics, or anything Crimson Peak related. (Don't I just wish!)


End file.
